Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2018-04-11
This could be nothing more than a malapropism, but it might be more. I would guess that all the utterers (below) know both words: prefix and preface. But the two words sound very similar, and perhaps one suggests the other on a subliminal level. Whatever else is going on here is eluding me.
Examples:
[#BUILDER-627] Add “Click to edit:” prefix to panel tooltips…
It would be better if you could prefix that with “Click to edit: ”, eg: “Click to edit: Navigation Panel” “Click to edit: Menu Panel” etc. ...
jira.adaptavist.com/browse/BUILDER-627 – 27k – Similar pages
http://jira.adaptavist.com/browse/BUILDER-627
xml-dev – RE: RFP: Namespace URI for HTML
In doing that I’ve changed the top level ‘html’ element’s content to use ‘newlang:body’ so I should prefix that with newlang too. ...
lists.xml.org/archives/xml-dev/199909/msg00385.h… – 14k – Similar pages
http://lists.xml.org/archives/xml-dev/1 … 00385.html
Kitchenaid Customer Service?
Instead, I’ll prefix that with, “I’ll never buy another KitchenAid product or any other appliance from their affiliated companies … for the way [they’re] ...
www.twsheppard.com/anonymous/Consumer/Dishwasher… – 10k – Similar pages
http://www.twsheppard.com/anonymous/Con … index.html
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From a position of limited knowledge, I vote non-Eggcorn, if only because there is no reshaping of the imagery. Prefix, preface….just means before, yeah? Maybe someone’s trying to get French with the spelling or something. At least they’re not saying “I’ll prix fixe that with….”
“Let’s not get bogged down in semantics.”—Homer Simpson to Gary Coleman
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I’m with billyphuz in leaning toward calling this a non-eggcorn. (No surprise there, I suppose – I’m ever the skeptic.)
I would say that jorkel’s third example, from Kitchenaid Customer Service, is an environment where I would definitely use “preface.” The writer seems to mean “say beforehand,” and there’s even the essentially set phrase, “I’ll preface that with…”
But the other examples are talking about “adding something before,” which could be either prefix or preface.
This reminds me of the “be aware > beware” discussion a couple of weeks ago. The word meanings are so similar as to not really suggest (to me, at least) any semantic reshaping.
http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/forum/view … hp?id=2549
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